Stratigraphic evolution of the North Levant Platform (Syria) during Aptian to Early Turonian

The Levant margin includes the easternmost part of the Eastern Mediterranean in a region where the oceanic (Tethyan) plates and the Arabian, African and Eurasian crustal plates interact. The tectonic events in relation with these plate deformations resulted in the division of the Levant into several provinces; the Southern, the Middle and the Northern. The studied area forms the Northern part of the Levant Platform. The combination of relative sea changes, tectonics, volcanism and local, regional and global environmental perturbations in the North Levant left imprints on the Aptian - Early Turonian carbonate platform configuration and depositional settings. The latter are reconstructed within a nimproved stratigraphic framework, based on field observations, high resolution biostratigraphy, geochemical analysis, detailed microfacies distribution and sequence stratigraphy. The Aptian Early Turonian succession of the North Levant in the South Palmyrides and Coastal Range of Syria represents two different depositional environments of the intra platform rifting basin (Palmyrides) and passive marginal basin (Coastal Range). Deposition was controlled by terrigenous input and/or nutrition resources, syn-depositional volcanic activity, climatic and sea level change which gives the Aptian and the Albian Early Turonian its characteristic features. A high resolution stratigraphic calibration of the Aptian - Early Turonian strata of the Coastal Range and South Palmyrides are based on the integrated identification of benthonic and planktonic foraminifera, in comparison with carbon isotope signals and (subsurface) logs. The abundant larger benthonic foraminifera in all outcrops of both areas allow to subdivide the Aptian - Early Turonian succession into 7 biozones in the Coastal Range and five in the South Palmyrides. Locally abundant planktonic foraminifera allow the subdivision of the latest Aptian - Cenomanian succession into seven biozones in the South Palmyrides, comparing to seven biozones range from the latest Albian to Early Turonian. Carbon isotope fluctuations record significant perturbations that are well comparable with several global changes of the carbon cycle: OAE1c, OAE1d, LCE I-III, MCE, and OAE2. The carbon isotope record is calibrated by high resolution biostratigraphic data, especially during rising sea levels. The comparison of the sequence stratigraphic interpretation with the major depositional systems shows that the depositional systems correspond very well with deepening-up, maximum flooding surfaces (mfs) and shallowing-up cycles that were applied to support the sequence stratigraphic model. Based on high resolution microfacies and gamma ray logs of five wells, the Aptian-Early Turonian succession was subdivided into eleven 3rd order (Syrian) depositional sequences, bounded by major unconformities. Three Aptian sequences of the Coastal Range and the South Palmyrides with mfs K80, K81S, K82S correlate partly with Arabian mfs (v. Buchem et al., 2012); four Albian sequences of the Coastal Range and two of the South Palmyrides with mfs K83S, K100, K110, K120 and five Cenomanian sequences (mfs K121S, K130, K131 S, K140) are defined

Study of Base Plates for Axially Loaded Columns

Civil Engineerin

Optimal operational regimes of sea water desalination plants with mechanical vapor compres-sion

Desalination of sea water is becoming more urgent for many regions. In the coming decades water will be used for desalination from various reservoirs of the World Ocean. It is important to determine the operating modes of desalination plants, which ensure the minimum cost of desalinated water at different salinity of sea water. Mathematical modeling of the desalination plant with mechanical vapor compres-sion (MVC) is carried out. It has been established that for each sea water salinity there is an optimum salinity value of the boiling brine in the evaporator. An approximating dependence was obtained for calculating the optimal salt content

Effects of Alpha Interferon Treatment on Intrinsic Anti-HIV-1 Immunity In Vivo

Alpha interferon (IFN-α) suppresses human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) replication in vitro by inducing cell-intrinsic retroviral restriction mechanisms. We investigated the effects of IFN-α/ribavirin (IFN-α/riba) treatment on 34 anti-HIV-1 restriction factors in vivo. Expression of several anti-HIV-1 restriction factors was significantly induced by IFN-α/riba in HIV/hepatitis C virus (HCV)-coinfected individuals. Fold induction of cumulative restriction factor expression in CD4+ T cells was significantly correlated with viral load reduction during IFN-α/riba treatment (r2 = 0.649; P < 0.016). Exogenous IFN-α induces supraphysiologic restriction factor expression associated with a pronounced decrease in HIV-1 viremia

Assessment of human cytomegalovirus co-infection in Egyptian chronic HCV patients

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is the most common cause of severe morbidity and mortality in immune- compromised individuals. This study was conducted to determine the incidence of HCMV infection in HCV patients who either spontaneously cleared the virus or progressed to chronic HCV infection. The study included a total of eighty four cases (48 females and 36 males) that were referred to blood banks for blood donation with an age range of 18-64 years (mean age 37.62 ± 10.03 years). Hepatitis C virus RNA and HCMV DNA were detected in sera by RT-nested PCR and nested PCR respectively in all subjects. Immunoglobulin G levels for HCV and HCMV were determined. Besides, IgM antibodies for HCMV infection were also determined in subjects' sera. Fifty three out of 84 cases (63%) were positive for HCV-RNA while 31 (37%) cases had negative HCV RNA. Forty six (87%) and 13 (25%) cases out of 53 HCV RNA positive patients were positive for HCMV IgG and IgM antibodies respectively. While 20 of 53 cases (38%) had detectable HCMV DNA. To examine the role of HCMV infection in HCV spontaneous resolution, two groups of HCV patients, group 1) chronic HCV infection (positive HCV RNA and positive IgG antibodies) vs group 2) spontaneous resolution (negative HCV RNA and positive IgG antibodies) were compared. The percentages of positive CMV IgG and IgM results is higher in chronic HCV patient than those in spontaneously cleared HCV patients and the difference is highly statistically significant (P value < 0.001). Also, there is a general trend towards elevated levels of CMV IgG antibodies in HCV chronic patients than those in spontaneously cleared HCV patients (P value < 0.02). HCMV DNA detection in group 1 was more than twice the value observed in group 2 (38% vs 14.3%, P value < 0.001). Moreover, levels of liver enzymes were significantly higher in HCV RNA positive cases co-infected with HCMV DNA than HCMV negative cases (P value < 0.001). The results indicate the role of HCMV in the liver pathogenesis. We conclude that chronic HCV patients co-infected with HCMV infection can be regarded as high risk groups for liver disease progression where they should be monitored for the long term outcome of the disease

Stratigraphische Entwicklung des Nord Levant Platform (Syrien) während der aptianischen bis zur frühen Turonzeit

The Levant margin includes the easternmost part of the Eastern Mediterranean in a region where the oceanic (Tethyan) plates and the Arabian, African and Eurasian crustal plates interact. The tectonic events in relation with these plate deformations resulted in the division of the Levant into several provinces; the Southern, the Middle and the Northern. The studied area forms the Northern part of the Levant Platform. The combination of relative sea changes, tectonics, volcanism and local, regional and global environmental perturbations in the North Levant left imprints on the Aptian - Early Turonian carbonate platform configuration and depositional settings. The latter are reconstructed within a nimproved stratigraphic framework, based on field observations, high resolution biostratigraphy, geochemical analysis, detailed microfacies distribution and sequence stratigraphy. The Aptian Early Turonian succession of the North Levant in the South Palmyrides and Coastal Range of Syria represents two different depositional environments of the intra platform rifting basin (Palmyrides) and passive marginal basin (Coastal Range). Deposition was controlled by terrigenous input and/or nutrition resources, syn-depositional volcanic activity, climatic and sea level change which gives the Aptian and the Albian Early Turonian its characteristic features. A high resolution stratigraphic calibration of the Aptian - Early Turonian strata of the Coastal Range and South Palmyrides are based on the integrated identification of benthonic and planktonic foraminifera, in comparison with carbon isotope signals and (subsurface) logs. The abundant larger benthonic foraminifera in all outcrops of both areas allow to subdivide the Aptian - Early Turonian succession into 7 biozones in the Coastal Range and five in the South Palmyrides. Locally abundant planktonic foraminifera allow the subdivision of the latest Aptian - Cenomanian succession into seven biozones in the South Palmyrides, comparing to seven biozones range from the latest Albian to Early Turonian. Carbon isotope fluctuations record significant perturbations that are well comparable with several global changes of the carbon cycle: OAE1c, OAE1d, LCE I-III, MCE, and OAE2. The carbon isotope record is calibrated by high resolution biostratigraphic data, especially during rising sea levels. The comparison of the sequence stratigraphic interpretation with the major depositional systems shows that the depositional systems correspond very well with deepening-up, maximum flooding surfaces (mfs) and shallowing-up cycles that were applied to support the sequence stratigraphic model. Based on high resolution microfacies and gamma ray logs of five wells, the Aptian-Early Turonian succession was subdivided into eleven 3rd order (Syrian) depositional sequences, bounded by major unconformities. Three Aptian sequences of the Coastal Range and the South Palmyrides with mfs K80, K81S, K82S correlate partly with Arabian mfs (v. Buchem et al., 2012); four Albian sequences of the Coastal Range and two of the South Palmyrides with mfs K83S, K100, K110, K120 and five Cenomanian sequences (mfs K121S, K130, K131 S, K140) are defined

Knowledge Graph pour NLG dans le contexte des agents conversationnels

International audienceThe use of knowledge graphs (KGs) enhances the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the responses provided by a conversational agent. While generating answers during conversations consists in generating text from these KGs, it is still regarded as a challenging task that has gained significant attention in recent years. In this document, we provide a review of different architectures used for knowledge graph-to-text generation including: Graph Neural Networks, the Graph Transformer, and linearization with seq2seq models. We discuss the advantages and limitations of each architecture and conclude that the choice of architecture will depend on the specific requirements of the task at hand. We also highlight the importance of considering constraints such as execution time and model validity, particularly in the context of conversational agents. Based on these constraints and the availability of labeled data for the domains of DAVI, we choose to use seq2seq Transformer-based models (PLMs) for the Knowledge Graph-to-Text Generation task. We aim to refine benchmark datasets of kg-to-text generation on PLMs and to explore the emotional and multilingual dimensions in our future work. Overall, this review provides insights into the different approaches for knowledge graph-to-text generation and outlines future directions for research in this area